Boston Red Sox's Xander Bogaerts slides into home plate to score on a wild pitch by Los Angeles Angels starter Alex Meyer (23) during the first inning of a baseball game at Fenway Park, Friday, June 23, 2017, in Boston. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher Alex Meyer delivers to the Boston Red Sox during the second inning of a baseball game at Fenway Park, Friday, June 23, 2017, in Boston. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

BOSTON >> Alex Meyer is not one to simply shrug off a bad outing, certainly not until he’s at least had a night’s sleep to move past it.

After the Angels’ 9-4 loss to the Boston Red Sox on Friday night, which was a setback in what had been an encouraging season of improvement for Meyer, he did not mince words about his performance.

In an ugly first inning, he walked the first two batters of the game. He later threw two run-scoring wild pitches, before finally getting the third out on his 38th pitch, with a 3-0 deficit.

“That’s unacceptable,” Meyer said. “You can’t put two guys on basically before the game starts. It’s frustrating. There’s not much more to say. It’s unacceptable.”

Meyer went on to call it “just stupid.”

Meyer ended up collecting himself, retiring 10 in a row before finally getting pulled after allowing four straight hits in the fourth. One of them was Hanley Ramirez’s two-run homer just inside the pole, a mere 302 feet down the right-field line. Meyer was charged with five runs in 3 1/3 innings, a step back from the six scoreless innings he pitched the last time out.

Manager Mike Scioscia suggested Meyer might have been “amped up,” which would certainly be understandable for a first game at Fenway Park, pitching in front of a crowd still buzzing with excitement from a pregame ceremony to retire David Ortiz’s number.

Meyer, however, said he felt normal.

“I didn’t feel my heart was racing,” he said. “It wasn’t anything different. I just have to start doing a better job on the first batter of the game, coming out and getting strike one.”

Aside from Meyer’s sloppy performance, there were a couple other positive signs out of the Angels pitching staff.

Huston Street pitched for the first time since July 31 having missed the end of last season with a knee injury and the start of this one with a strained lat. Street pitched a perfect inning, on 11 pitches, and his fastball was 88-90 mph.

“I felt really good,” Street said. “It’s been a longer road, obviously this season. We had a couple setbacks, but the last three weeks the body has started to feel locked in. … My stuff has been very sharp, pretty much the last four or five weeks.”

Between Meyer and Street, Eduardo Paredes made his major league debut.

The 22-year-old right-hander got seven outs in the first seven batters he faced — one hit was erased on a double play — but then he issued his first walk and gave up his first homer, Sandy Leon’s two-run shot in the sixth.

“He was calm out there,” Scioscia said. “He was cool. Just missed a couple locations in the third inning he was out there, but he was fine.”

Those insurance runs, which put the Red Sox up, 7-1, proved to be significant, because in the top of the seventh the Angels scored three runs. Ben Revere doubled, Martin Maldonado tripled, Cliff Pennington doubled and Kole Calhoun doubled, collaborating to cut the Boston lead in half.

Jose Alvarez then allowed the Red Sox to tack on two more runs. He’s now allowed 13 earned runs in his last 14 innings. That pretty much ended any hopes the Angels had for a comeback that could at least take some of the sting out of Meyer’s start.

“It’s just frustrating,” he said. “I’ll sit and think about this one tonight, then come in tomorrow and forget about it.”

Jeff Fletcher has covered the Angels since 2013. Before that, he spent 11 years covering the Giants and A's and working as a national baseball writer. Jeff is a Hall of Fame voter. In 2015, he was elected chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

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